Midnight. I trudge into the house after a longer-than-it-should-be workday, exhausted. Everyone sleeps, and the quiet is welcome. But I need time to decompress. I slump onto the couch and channel surf. MTV nonsense. Saturday Night Live. Not my cup of tea. Movies. Oh, what’s this? Cartoons on this late? I had stumbled across Adult…
Author: Chris Kincaid
8 Seasonally Favorite Anime Opening Themes
Everyone has favorite anime opening themes. My experience with anime is rather limited compared to many, but these opening themes all have a place in my music library. Opening themes seek to capture the feelings found in story arches. They also serve to describe the characters. I enjoy classical and symphonic works. My music tastes…
Japanese Ghost Stories: Spirits, Hauntings, and Paranormal Phenomena
Do you know what happens to a tool when it becomes 100 years old? What about a tree when it sees its 1,000th birthday? What does it matter if a dinner plate is broken? Cartien Ross answers these questions and more in her book Japanese Ghost Stories, Spirits, Hauntings, and Paranormal Phenomena. Ross looks at…
Challenges of the Japanese Single Mother
50% of one-parent Japanese families live below the poverty line (Ichino, 2014). Japanese single mothers are one of those topics people do not talk about. Japanese society has a long history of divorce, but during the Meiji Restoration, divorce became a problem for women. The combination of strong family values and tax policies that support…
The Evangelion of Shojo: Revolutionary Girl Utena
Revolutionary Girl Utena is a game changer on the order of Evangelion. Like Sailor Moon, Utena is a magical girl story. The story is stuffed with symbolism and considered a post-modern fairy-tale (Haeker, n.d). This symbolism is what makes many people consider Utena the Evangelion of shojo (Rose, 2013). I will touch on some of these…
Sailor Moon: The Rise of the Girl Hero
It came to my attention that JP is biased. We often focus on shonen and more male oriented topics. When I initially planned this series of anime/manga that changed the medium, Sailor Moon wasn’t on the list. After thinking about it, I realized how wrong this was. Sailor Moon is one of the most important…